Well Heroes has been denied another season after the last mediocre one, so that little journey ended right along side Lost and Dollhouse. But let's take a look back at the characters of the show and their very flawed traits. This is another issue of Sum Ups.
1. Peter Petrelli
A former hospice nurse who discovers he has the ability to mimic other peoples' powers. I've gotta say, in the end Peter was the only real hero on the show Heroes. I mean he has his obvious personal problems that he tries to deal with, but also he is the only one who can deal with those problems while going out and saving people. No one else on the show had as much initiative to save others like Peter, they were all just too easily distracted or stupid. Oh Peter, why couldn't the rest be as badass as you?
2. Hiro Nakamura
The nerdy Japanese cubicle worker who discovers he has the very confusing and limited ability to control space and time. Next to Claire, Hiro was kind of the poster boy for Heroes. He was a comic book obsessed, geeky, and often childlike young man with big dreams of saving the world. Unfortunately those dreams that were very well into his reach were always overshadowed when he decided to go on roadtrips with his buddy Ando, accidentally time travel to an upcoming plot point, or go on supposedly important missions that just end up wasting time. Seriously, Hiro has as much control over his time travel powers as the raiders had over the Lost Ark. Also he is just stupid. Sure there are moments when he seems like he's growing up and learning, but due to inconsistant writing, he never learns from his mistakes and is always incompetent. One of the last examples of the stupid things that happen to Hiro: a kinda-sorta telepathic person tries to alter Hiro's mind so that he will be on the side of evil. What happens though? Hiro instead had his mind scrambled so that he would only speak and act in a hyper fanboy way, meaning Hiro would say random things like "there can be only one," call his best friend "Robin," a mental asylum "Arkham," and the villain "insert comic villian name here." To the telepath with confusing powers who tried to turn Hiro to the dark side I ask: HOW DO YOU FUCK UP THAT BAD!!!
3. Claire Bennett
Like most of the characters, I started off really liking Claire. She was a rural teenage cheerleader who was deeply troubled by her powers of invincibility and healing. This made her character nuanced and interesting. There even times when she showed true heroism and bravery. Then, like most of the characters, her motives and wants became confused and illogical. Claire went from wanting to live a normal life to accepting who she is and wanting to be a hero back to wanting a normal life and again and again and again. I'm not even sure where she was last we left her. And her idealism wasn't the only thing left in question at the end. They really tried to make her possible bisexuality near the end as ambiguous as possible. Just say yes or no, Heroes.
4. Gabriel "Sylar" Gray
The one character who keeps you interested even when he is being illogical or confusing. Sylar began as the show's primary boogieman villain. His main power is intuitive aptitude (meaning he can figure things out very easily, idk) but his main function is finding people with powers, killing them, cutting open their skulls, and doing...something to their brain so that he can steal powers. With this element, Sylar is usually the most dangerous character. Sylar has a streak Ben Linus later adopts, except when Ben adopts it he remains consistant. There are times when Sylar is either easily manipulated (season 3) or randomly disillusioned with his actions (final season) so that he tries to be a good person. The first time he looked as if he was seriously on the path to being a hero, but then he realized he'd been fooled (where was your intuitive aptitude then) and went back to slicing heads. Then finally near the abrupt end of the show Sylar realized he'd grown tired of causing so much pain and suffering and wanted to be a good person. Honestly, I could accept Sylar as either villain or hero. As a villain he plays cold and sadistic very well; he's a villain you absolutely love to hate. As a hero you can hear the regret and newfound kindness in his voice, you want him to stay this way but at the same time if he does we lose out on the show's best bad guy. I think I best liked him, surprisingly, when Peter timetraveled to the future and found that Sylar had repressed his psychotic urges and was now a single, stay at home dad. That was nice. Guess we'll never know what will become of this indecisive man in black.
5. Nathan Petrelli
He is the politican with the power of flight, he is also Peter's brother and Claire's biological father. I felt about Nathan kind of the same way I felt about Jack Shepherd from Lost. I had a love-hate relationship with his character, constantly going back and forth between really liking him to being extremely frustrated with him. Nathan ended up with a lot of the same problems as Sylar. His ideals were often changed very easily. He went back and forth pursuing very righteous and noble causes to being very faschist like and corrupt. In the end, well sorta, he gets John Locked. When he and his brother reconcile and go up against the then insane Sylar, tragedy occurs. Peter is thrown away from the fight, leaving only Sylar and Nathan. But of course Nathan is no match, allowing Sylar to slit his throat. Sylar is later taken down by Peter, but the majority of the characters don't know where Nathan is. Nathan's anti-hero mother Angela and Noah Bennett manage to convince telepathic Matt Parkman to remove the unconscious Sylar's mind from his body and replace it with Nathan's. With this new mind and a shape shifting ability he picked up, Sylar is theoretically erased and convinced that he is Nathan Petrelli = so the Heroes main bad guy now looks like an important heroic figure. In the final season, Sylar does make his way back to his body, leading Peter to try to finally erase Sylar and get his brother back. He almost succeeds, but Nathan doesn't want to fight to keep Sylar suppressed and lets the last bit of himself die. It was a sad end to a character I felt a lot for in the end.
6. Noah Bennett
An agent working for a company that monitors and/or detains people with super powers so as to protect them and the rest of the world. Noah is also the adoptive father of Claire who does everything in his power to protect her from...well just about everything. I grew to like Noah a lot over the course of Heroes. Sure, I mean, he never tells anyone the truth when him doing so wouldn't even have that many reprecussions, but he's still a good character. He always means well, but he's just too violent. But they really fuck up his backstory near the end of the last season. It's actually the second backstory, the first one was in the first season showing him being hired by The Company, his work alongside a superpowered agent, his attempts to keep his true identity secret from his family, and ensuing betrayals in the line of duty. That was a good episode and a good backstory. This is the REAL backstory they thought had to be added: Noah started out as a playwright/car salesman with a loving wife and a baby on the way. Wifey is killed along with the baby when they are robbed by a telekinetic thug. Noah goes out seeking revenge and ends up killing a dangerous superhuman (but never the one who killed his wife I guess) and that was what got the Company's attention to him. Wow...that's pretty bad, Heroes.
7. Matt Parkman
Matt Parkman was kind of like Peter for awhile, a man who could really do stuff with his powers. A police officer, having telepathy was probably a valuable asset for Matt. He can tell what a criminal is thinking and know whether they are innocent or guilty. But like Hiro, they don't do much with these powers. Matt does have his crowning mometns of heroism though. He was the one who tried to remove Sylar's mind from his body and replace it with Nathan's. This ended up leaving the deranged Sylar, Matt's nemesis since the show's start, inside of his own head. This allowed Sylar to take over his body and threaten his family and others. Not wanting any more deaths on his conscience or hands, Matt eventually does tell Sylar where his body is, but is also able to cleverly double cross him by having Sylar alert the police (it's confusing). In this moment, Matt is prepared to sacrifice himself to kill Sylar by forcing the police to shoot his body which would kill them both. Of course they both survive though, because Heroes couldn't very well do something like kill two main characters in one episode because what other show would do that (coughSayidcoughSuncoughJincough). Oh Matt, why couldn't you have had more to do.
8. Mohinder Suresh
A well intentioned, but frankly boring scientist from India who basically fills the role of intelligent-brown skinned man that Lost made popular. Mohinder instigates a lot of what happens in the Heroes saga by trying to take up his dead father's research and find people with superpowers. He even eventually gets superpowers himself, having increased strength, speed and agility by using a formula that gives people powers. This formula also turned people and even himself into grotesque freaks, but of course he was cured of that. So near the end of the show what did he have to do: he argued with his girlfriend, tried to burn a film, got stuck in a mental asylum, and fixed a compass. Riveting.
9. Nikki Sanders/Tracey Strauss
The two hot identical twins who never got a chance to meet each other. Nikki was first introduced and I thought she was an interesting, cool, and emotion investing person. Her main motive was to protect her family with her superhuman strength, but she unfortunately had a split personality of a sister she did know named Jessica who did various psychotic things that really made no sense. Just as Nikki was furthering her path of redemption she gets killed and we are introduced to her long lost twin Tracey, a political advisor/political whore/controller of ice who we really don't care about. In the final season, Tracey is mainly used as a deus ex machina who shows up whenever Noah Bennett needs her help. Pretty disappointing.
So that's the main round up of Heroes. I hoped they didn't confuse you too much. I kept up with Heroes and they confused the hell out of me. But that didn't mean they didn't have their good moments. They were all played by pretty solid actors and the characters were good, so I mostly just blame the writing that got progressively dumber as the show went on.
This has been more TV shit from Your Modest Guru. Thanks for reading.
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